


Alpha, Bet-you didn't see this coming

by FauxPause



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Accidental Knotting, Allura is the referenced character death bc canon sucks, Alpha Lance (Voltron), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Communication Failure, Cuddling & Snuggling, Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Feral Behavior, Galran Culture (Voltron), Hooks, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kinda, Knotting, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mentioned Allura/Lance - Freeform, Minor body dysphoria, NO NONCON OR DUBCON, Non-Human Genitalia, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Non-positive Alpha stereotypes, Ohohoho, Omega Keith (Voltron), Omega Verse, Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Scent Marking, Service Top Lance (Voltron), Stereotypes, because his crush is canon, communication is just difficult esp for these characters, minor self loathing, referenced Allura/Lotor, what's a hook you ask?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-10-18 10:44:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20637881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FauxPause/pseuds/FauxPause
Summary: [From Strange Collection. It's long enough (like KitT) to merit its own page now.]Pseudo Post Canon, A/B/O AU wherein 99.999998% of the world's population are Beta, so much so to the point that Alpha and Omega are thought to be extinct after the Third War. Heats and Ruts are pornographic fantasies and scents aren't any more than perfume or deodorant. With so much misinformation and old (negative) stereotypes prevailing, Lance has no idea what he'll become now that his supply of suppressants has been destroyed.And then, of course, there's Keith.





	1. Chapter 1

Lance presented Alpha long before making fighter pilot.

Long before he roomed with Hunk and before the mission to Kerberos was even discussed.

It started with a fever in the night. His roommate scrambled for help as the thermometer from another home gave an innocuous _beep!_ and a less innocuous reading of 106 F. 

The inexplicably spreading smell of smoke quickly created confusion. Teachers were roused from their beds by panicked accounts of a student’s brain cooking in the night. Complaints echoed up and down the residence hall; panic and weak knees and headaches springing up mere minutes after the first boy’s spooked arrival, his fists bruising under the force of his panicked knocking against the closest officer’s door.

Lance, thirteen and small for his age, a fighter-class hopeful, spends a week living in a quarantined medical bay.

Alphas and Omegas, they claim over and over, were extinct. They were gone. There were maybe a couple hundred left in the world, the last war helpfully draining them from civilized society.

Lance spends a week living in a quarantined medical bay surrounded by faceless adults in hazmat suits. A week, poked and prodded and allowed only short video calls with his family as they signed waiver after waiver and downloaded the sparse and scattered literature on how to deal with what Lance was turning into. The stigma of Alphas long overshadowing what little research persisted. 

It was days before the outdated designation was even mentioned near the confused child.

Lance hears every word. He understands little.

Omega were revered as beautiful, sensitive, but delicate. Manipulative. Conniving and weak-hearted. Supposedly loyal, but ultimately self-serving. They’re an old, outdated, standard of beauty that persists subconsciously even now. Remnants of them adjusted but no less prolific in marketing. 

Alphas were shown as muscular, ridiculously tall, misshapen caricatures of what might have been conventionally attractive on anything else. They were cruel, bullies, dull, good for war and hard labor and nothing as intricate or advance as modern society. A brutish bygone of a better forgotten era.

Someone brings the word up, says_ alpha _into the hush of machines and violent flinching of professionals, and Lance can feel the tears well behind his eyes.

_Alphas_.

At best, they’re the cartoon caveman in Saturday comics that can’t think their way out of paper bags. 

At worst… at worst they’re monsters. Murderers, rapists, no more than beasts who can’t think further than their genitals. There’s a reason, they tell the wide-eyed children, that A’s and O’s went extinct.

And now Lance is turning into one. 

* * *

The first care package from home smells more like magic than laundry detergent.

Lance closed his eyes and did his best to ignore the tapping that followed his every action. He tried to imagine he was in his room at home, far, far away from the styluses and pads and cameras. Each inhale helped him piece the fantasy together; Marco, Luis, Veronica, Rachel, Lisa. It was almost like they were there with him.

Slowly, the fever fades.

The smell of smoke lingers in the ward for months.

* * *

He’s told, in no uncertain terms, that he will be watched.

His former roommate moves out. The boy, who once traded notes and care-package sweets and comic books, who ran to get help, doesn’t ever speak to him again.

When brown eyes meet blue they’re only held in a squinting, narrow-eyed glare. As though the other were afraid to blink.

After the third smug smirk sent at his averted gaze, Lance sets his jaw and stares James down until the boy pulls away and ducks his head. The rush of victory that flushes through Lance sinks like a stone in his stomach as he realizes what that body language means from a beta to a- to _him_.

He makes sure it never happens again (and does his best not to miss the interaction, the rush of a challenge made and met and _won_).

He finds himself glaring at the dark haired boy next to James instead. The one who no one else talks to either. 

But for all that he sucks at people, Kogane is _amazing _in the simulator. Glaring at him, even if he _is _jealous and upset and its driving him _mental _that other never seems to even _notice_, just doesn’t feel right.

Besides, despite what everyone’s started saying, he isn’t _stupid_.

Kogane lives with Captain Shirogane and Professor Wright. Picking a fight with him would be a one way ticket home.

(He watches anyway, from across the room where his minders won’t worry about him getting too near their golden boy, wishing that Kogane would just _turn around and notice him_. That doesn’t happen either.) 

So Lance is alone, in the beginning. No roommate. No friends. Even his bi-weekly visits to the medical bay are made forcibly impersonal. Hazard suits and filtration masks on without fail as they draw blood and spike his hormonal levels, twist him up and up and up inside, before dropping them hard enough that he wonders why they’re even bothering with the extra pills. He takes them anyway. 

He calls home more and more frequently.

Starts to take dinner back to his room so he can at least pretend to eat with someone, even if it’s just his abuela over a video call.

His sisters send him pill caddies and shower caddies. Facemasks and loofahs and sugar scrubs for everything from his lips to his soles. They play silly songs and make up rhymes and color coordinate his things by day and type and chemical compatibility. Lance grows used to mixing his medicine into the products his sisters send him from around the world. (He doesn’t tell the Garrison - they don’t really listen to him now at those check-ups anyways). 

He doesn’t make it into Fighter class at the end of term.

* * *

They put him in Cargo and everything falls apart again. 

They assign him a new roommate, a nervous mechanic (_beta - _normal_, like everyone else) _who’s spooked two people into falling out already. Or so the rumors go.  
  
(People still talk _to _Lance, even if sometimes it’s more like yelling. Even if sometimes the laughter isn’t so much _with _him anymore as much as it is _at _him. It’s okay, though. He gets it. He’d rather laugh than be scared too - even if his nose tells him that none of the people laughing are actually _happy about it_.) 

It’s hard, at first. They’re both awkward. Both, Lance slowly puts together over the silence filled meals and nights, afraid of the other.

It’s easier once he realizes that Tsuyoshi, by some grace or twist of fate, has no idea _what _he is.

That the other boy is actually afraid of _everything_, nearly as much as Lance is afraid of himself. He wonders why Hunk, who flushes and smiles and smells a little like fresh-baked bread rolls when Lance gives him the nick-name, even joined the Garrison in the first place. He _does _know this is a _space _program, right? Being afraid of everything from the Zero-G machine to the dark isn’t really the best start to what remains one of the most dangerous careers around. 

But Lance finds, little by little, bit by bit, that he can calm the bigger boy. A nudge here, a joke there. If he steels his spine and pulls Hunk in, sometimes he can practically see the worry evaporate off his friend_. _Eventually, it’s almost like he can _smell _when Hunk’s anxiety starts to spike. Eventually, Lance hardly has to do more than just _be there _to settle Hunk’s mind.

It’s not much, but it's something. Something _good_. Something he can _do_, help this anxious, brilliant, kid center himself and just be. Lance tries not to think about the _how _ any more than he does the tingling rush that starts up each time Hunk acquiesces to his crazier schemes or carefully delicate demands. 

The beauty products keep coming and eventually an entire routine forms from them. Partially to cover up the minutes in the morning needed to apply the demanded blockers and suppressants and partially because, well, Lance _likes _his face. Likes how he’s starting to look.

Lisa says it's important that he takes care of his skin. Rachel always moans about how pretty he looks after they wash their faces together. Three years later, the truth and the lie stretch into each other until both routines were indistinguishable from the other.

If Hunk wondered at his need to smell overwhelmingly of coconut, vanilla, or whatever the strongest most appealing scent was on sale that week then he asked it sparingly and only after Lance paraded himself out of the shared bathroom, steam leaking artificially-sweet scent even a dulled beta’s nose could pick up.

So Lance was a flirt. Lance was a student. Lance was something of a joke, but he was a _harmless _joke.

No one looked at him and thought _monster_. Thought _dangerous_, thought _tranq him again _or _make sure to write that down_. No one glanced twice at the twiggy loud mouth with low self-esteem and a beauty routine and thought _alpha_.

Then he made fighter pilot.

Then Keith Kogane crashed back into his life.

Then they were in space, in the middle of an ancient, senseless, war and Lance completely forgot to worry about his secret, the weight of it inconsequential in the face of indisputable galactic genocide.

Then he woke one morning not to the sound of the castle’s alarm shrieking madly but to the roiling scent of smoke.

* * *

He bathed until his skin rubbed raw. Hid the abrasions under layers of the heaviest scented creams he could find in the small provided bathroom. Scrubbed his face, his neck, his hands until they shone.

Strode half dressed and full of faked confidence onto the bridge and prayed that no one noticed anything past his, heh, smoke screen, of hygiene and attitude.

It worked.

Almost a little too well.

But that was for the best. There were no other alternatives and he was, Lance knew, running out of time. He’d never had a rut. He’d been on suppressants and blockers his entire life.

He didn’t know what he’d become without them.

* * *

Luckily, or rather, obviously, Lance knew the combination of hormones and chemicals used in his blockers.

He had to. It was required by law that he be able to recite the formula to suppress his rut and pheromone production in case of an emergency. (Or any situation in which someone might feel threatened by him, however ridiculous that continued to feel to the 5’8” 150 lb teenager).

It wasn’t hard to convince Coran help him synthesize something as a stop-gap.

It was surprisingly easy, really. Calculations all but complete, only needing new variables to the tune of Lance's weight and projected growth. But Alteans didn’t have secondary genders. Coran had gone quiet when he’d brought it up. (He _still_ didn't know what that was about. Hadn't thought to ask, at the time. Had never found the right moment to afterwards). 

Altean cosmetics and some of the weirdest scented blockers he’d ever seen before did the rest.

It worked.

Or… it had, until they blew the castle up. (And with it, his ability to try and be _normal_.)

He rationed his remaining stock sparingly. Glad beyond reason that he’d made sure to keep extra on his person after that terrifying first day in the castle ship. Heart skipping over the realization that his medication was tucked away in his shower caddies on Earth.

It was never going to be enough. He just had to make it to Earth. That was all…

And if his temper seemed to fray or his attention wavered, well, things were tense.

It was the end of the world, after all.

They were all allowed a little leeway.

* * *

Lance has been off since they destroyed the castle.

He was weird before, sure, had been weird even back at the Garrison. (Who needed to bathe that frequently?)

But this was different. He’d been snappish and quiet in weird turns. Avoiding them and then lashing out for attention when they all least expected it.

He’d been so solid, recently. Pidge had hardly even recognized him after Shiro’s disappearance. And then again, despite his frankly weird ups and downs, when he'd turned into an emotional rock for more than just Allura in the wake of Lotor’s betrayal.

But when they’d been floating in space, wrung out and desperate and in _need _of that weird brand of calm command he’d started pulling out of nowhere, Lance’d nearly cut Keith to ribbons with his tongue for no discernible reason. 

Lance has been off and Pidge has been meaning to do something about it. Confront him, maybe. Say something for sure. 

But… there was Romelle and the Lions crashing and then the message her dad left for them- things just got busy.

And Lance just got weirder.

But as they slowed to a halt beneath a makeshift particle barrier the pieces started to click into place. Starting with the small army of Lance-like people rushing towards them and ending with the fact that her next breath nearly choked her.

The smell of smog rolls through the room, eddying up against her in waves.

It's not… unpleasant, she admits after a few more inhales. But it’s unexpected. It doesn’t belong. She looks around the hangar bay, looking for dark plumes of fouled air. Sees nothing. Just a few spare ships, a few spare personnel. Just Lance, on his knees, crying and laughing and surrounded by family.

Slowly, a horrible idea starts to prickle in the back of her head. More details, once ignored, falling into place. She tries to shove it down, stop her own brain from thinking along to traitorous thoughts. 

Watches Lance rub his face against his niece and nephew and reach out to pull his trembling family into long arms. Watches and waits and breathes gently in, doing her best to keep her open jaw out of sight and pointed towards the huddle of accents and tanned skin and clamoring limbs.

Tears are rolling down Lance’s face. The smell seems to thicken in the air.

She swallows, thinks for a moment, and rolls the air around her palate the way she remembers playing at in primary school after the required lesson on history and dynamics. She’d outguessed her brother what was for dinner for weeks after.

The scent of smoke seemed more… mellow, even as it surged through the room once again. It was rounder now, less acerbic. More like heating metal and warm pans. It was still primarily smoke, sure, but now it clung like nights gathered around an open fire. Like a late dinner sizzling away into the dancing shadows, like taking off her shoes after along day of walking. Something less than sheer heat now. Less fresh remains of kindling and more familiar.

“Huh. Campfire.” She announces and ignores Shiro's appalled look. 

Pidge thinks of starry nights and hushed voices and wonders when this happened. Wonders how she hadn’t noticed when they were all of five (four and a half) humans in space.

* * *

The fresh smoke scent isn’t gentle; it’s not a dancing hearth or burning candle-wax. It’s certainly not a campfire. The smell is reminiscent of the aftermath of battles. The scent of the lions winding down. Carbon scoring and damage and beneath that an almost iron smell that’s never quite left his own skin.

(Another holdover from the arena.)

It sets something under his chest twitching, stands his hair on end. Pidge hums and he nearly gags as she opens her mouth to scent the air once more.

It’s smoke.

An aftermath, a sign of something gone irreparably wrong. A concrete notice that something has been irreversibly lost.

Still... He watches as three more people, tan skinned and dark haired, throw themselves into the shifting pile of reunion and joy.

It’s _Lance _.

Goofy, home-sick, irresponsible Lance. Shiro swallows and huffs a breath out of his nose, parting his lips slightly enough to draw in a subtle breath.

He regrets it immediately.

It’s acrid, almost oppressive. Cut across without any scent of wood, metal, plastic or tinder of any kind. Just the sharp rend of wounded ozone and the boiling sense-memory of heat. It cuts through the lungs, settles deep, and burns.

Shiro winces deeper into the shuttle, eyes unable to remain on the growing huddle of McClains.

He doesn’t know how they can stand it.

He’s feet away and it’s already choking.

* * *

The smell of smoke is almost overpowering. The whole room is filling with it. The air in his lungs _burns_.

Keith can feel his head going fuzzy once again and try as he might, shake his head and breathe out and chew his tongue, he can’t help but want to give in. He breathes. Soldered wires, a cookstove on a busy night, the residue in the air after an explosion, the copper-tang taste of ozone and cinders.

Fire has always been a… complicated element in his life.

But nothing has ever quite been like this.

It picks him up and wrings him out all at once. Punches the air out of his lungs and settles in deep. It's heady and intoxicating and ephemeral. Too much and not enough all at once in equal measures as to drive him mad.

He feels himself start to sway, clenches his hands down hard over the back of the nearest chair. An old fear raises its ancient head.

Keith always registered as a Beta.

Every test pinged back** normal** with a few inconsistencies that were, honestly, not terribly unusual. Large eyes, soft hair, unusually strong and swift. Good holdovers from latent omegan genes, people muttered. Now if only he didn’t have such an _alpha temper _they would twitter and chortle.

But he did have a temper and he did have the sheer skill to back his ‘attitude’ up. He was faster than everyone else, stronger than they expected him to be, smarter than they felt he had any right.

Why should he have to bow down to their expectations?

So he didn’t. He pushed, he bucked, he shrugged and one day he stole the car of a Garrison official and changed his entire life.

Until now. Until now, where he feels fourteen and feverish and weak-kneed, wondering what the hell is happening to him all over again.

The same consuming scent of smog is making a home in his lungs and head.

By the time Iverson’s approached them he’s leapt down to the opposite side of the shuttle, grateful for Kosmo’s distraction and the infallible human-pack-puppy response that remains intact in even grown men.

He doesn’t let his eyes stray to the pile of McClains.

Doesn’t call the others over.

Doesn’t demand answers or ask questions or even twitch in Lance’s direction.

He lets the other take his hand before they part ways.

He doesn’t hold on. Doesn’t tell Lance he never wants to breath filtered air again, never wants to breathe air that doesn’t tell him that the other is _alive _and _right there _and _so happy he could burst_.

He breaths, slow and deep and ignores the way Shiro’s tucked his wrinkled nose down into his own shoulder and Krolia’s raised brows.

He regrets, later, that he’d slipped on his old gloves.

* * *

He does make it back to earth. In time even.

But the Galra have attacked.

Supplies are short.

There are no suppressants.

In fact, be it due to stress or radiation or simply a paradigm shift, there’s been a small resurgence of Alpha and Omega presentations. Some want them out on the front lines. Some want them cast out of the camps, horror stories and half-remembered propaganda warning them that A’s and O’s were unstable. That an Alpha would dominate and destroy, that an Omega would connive and control. Misheld beliefs changing what were once people, fellow survivors, into easily boxed concepts. Sorted and shipped away, to front lines and resistance missions and locked rooms.

There are no suppressants and Lance knows there won’t be any more secret even as he wrapped his arms around his niece and nephew.

Nadia smells like salt air. His niece smells like seaweed in the sun, rotten and sweet and salty. They’re in a Texan desert in a war and the only explanation is that she’s like Lance. Another alpha, presented far earlier. Stress, his mother tells him as she stares sadly at her youngest and her granddaughter. Nadia presses closer to his chest, muttering in her sleep just like her mother, smoke and salt spilling over the room and its inhabitants. Sylvio snores softly, lines in his forehead easing out against Lance’s shin as he breathes in and is at peace.

Luis smiles, silent and strong and in his family’s corner as ever. Marco drops his head between his knees and laughs and laughs and laughs. Lisa hums under her breath as she slips a needle through a jacket that reminds Lance a lot of his own. Rachel leans over her and bemoans the smell sticking in her hair, just the way she did when he was thirteen and terrified and huddled between the old couch and the wall in the living room. They’re okay.

There are no suppressants.

Lance, ice in his veins, is glad to hear that there’s not been time for much experimentation either. (Something in him is soothed by the confirmation that they don’t know about Nadia. That they think, that he _is_, the only alpha on base. He tries not to pay that feeling any attention.) 

They have, apparently, been too busy trying to keep him alive. Despite the brave show he’s putting on for the kids (_ and they’re so big now) _he aches all over in a way he hasn’t since the summer he turned fifteen and grew a foot taller in six weeks. 

He’s not really surprised when they tell him it’s happening again. His limbs feel too-long and too-heavy and did he mention that he _aches_? Apparently, Lisa says, that’s what happens when your body starts _eating itself _to try and create _more _from _nothing _and, what, exactly has he been eating the last year; his iron levels are _way too low_. 

It explains the six IV poles surrounding him and the crazy number of bags hanging off each like christmas baubles. 

In retrospect, that’d been the summer Lisa’d insisted he cut his doses in half. Makes sense it’d happen _again _what with the forced-flush he’s been on the last few weeks in space. 

Despite all of this, or maybe because of it, he’s the first of the paladins to wake up from the healing comas. His body is in overdrive. It’s bucking against years of chemical alterations and has the backing of the altean isotopes he’s been stop-gapping his suppressants with and the fact that he’s still only seventeen and thus still well within the reach of puberty. It’s unprecedented and unexpected and, without those suppressants and blockers, completely unstoppable.

He backs away when they tell him this, closer to his siblings, niece and nephew pressed to the small of his back, and makes his excuses as soon as he is able to get out of bed.

He doesn’t go back.

If Marco sneaks a wheelchair away when noone is looking, then that’s their business. Sylvio likes pushing at the wheels anyway and toys are hard to find. If Lance’s hands, wrists, cheeks find their way against his family’s clothes and faces and hair, compulsively spreading scent and touching to make sure that they’re alive and real and there then that’s his problem. His compulsion.

If he feels the need to search out the other paladins, to sit and watch them breathe, to clasp their hands between his and to hold as tight as they had in the blackness of space? To wait and watch over them while they sleep?

...He doesn’t know what the others know. If the others know.

He doesn’t want to know.

So he doesn’t go to them. Doesn’t sit near them or with them or touch them.

He works, slowly but steadily, with Lisa. Leans on Marco and Luis as they help him walk around the halls and sneak weights and bands and poorly recorded videos of the still on-going cadet exercises. 

In inches and steps, he gets better. Rachel sighs about hollow legs and unfair waistlines and shoves more food his way every chance she gets. He lets her worry in her own way, the same as he lets Silvio paint his nails and Nadia scruff fingers through his too-long hair and doesn’t whine as his mother makes him do _two more reps of those, dear, you looked shaky the other day and if you’re serious about going back out there- _

He doesn’t go see them.

But they need their lions. They need Voltron, if they’re going to save the Earth. Their home.

Lance closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and requests his sister be the one to travel with him instead of any of the Garrison graduates.

None of them will meet his eyes anyway.

His request is summarily granted.

* * *

They win the day.

He saves Veronica’s life. Red comes for him, which has to be the biggest shock he’s had since his presentation, and they form Voltron.

They fall.

The Atlas shudders to life. 

Voltron rises again. 

...Allura never comes back from that last mission. 

(Lance does his best to not let his regrets, his cowardice, taint her choice. It still hurts, aches, weeps, with the stench of _failure _. He breaks down the first time he catches sight of his reflection.)

* * *

Everything _aches_, inside and out. 

His legs feel brittle. He’s still too-skinny according to everyone he knows and gets dizzy if he stands up too fast and his arms burn as Luis hurls the medicine ball back at him. 

Allura is _gone_. 

Pidge has been in the labs with the Alteans for so long that Lance hopes _someone _reminds them to hydrate. Brings them food, maybe. Makes sure that they’re not asleep somewhere precarious with computer keys pressing their glasses awry and-

Hunk has gone home. Back to Hawaii with his parents and Shay, ready and prepared to help with the much needed repairs. 

He doesn’t know where Coran is. He knows that he’d rather the older altean was close by, where he could see him. Where he could sic Nadia and Sylvio on the ginger until his voice ran hoarse from storytelling. Maybe get some answers...

And Keith-

_“HEY! _” 

-Lance shakes his head, choking the snarl back out of his voice as he glares at Luis. His oldest brother whistles innocently, refusing to make any eye contact at all. 

“Pay attention, conchito, your elf-scales are flashing again.” 

“They’re not _elf-scales_, Luis, jeez.” Lance grumbles, _it’s not a _growl _Ma oh my gosh, _and hurls the weight back before flopping to the floor. 

They are a touchy subject though. Almost enough to distract him from thoughts of their errant fearless leader. Almost, but not quite. 

He hasn’t seen hide or hair of Keith in days. Part of that, of course, is that technically he’s still in rehab (physical therapy, Lisa insists, but he knows what it is) and thus is ensconced the largely abandoned medical wing of the Atlas.

Part of it is that he’s dodging most of the Garrison officers like they carry the plague, and a lot of them are treating him the same, and given Keith’s importance as Black Paladin and lead contact with the Blades of Marmora he’s been pretty swamped by the guys in grey and gold trim. 

Lance takes a deep breath and finishes the last exchange of the set. 

And part of it, he thinks, is because he doesn’t quite know what to do. With Keith. 

With anyone from Voltron, really. He reaches up and traces the new lines under his eyes. He wants-

“Heyo familo!” 

Lance sighed from his place on the floor, “Marco why.” 

The older McClain winked and shot a pair of finger guns, clicking his tongue against his teeth incessantly until Luis strides over and slings the lankier McClain over one shoulder.

* * *

Their footsteps echo loudly as the three McClain boys hike back to their claimed set of rooms. 

“Why is it so quiet here anyway? Where is everyone? What’s wrong that we don’t know?”

Luis and Marco exchange quite glances at Lance’s low-grade paranoia. 

“What?”

Marco, of course, cracks first. “Lala, there’s nothing wrong with this space except for you.” 

“Marc.” 

Luis’ reprimand doesn't even slow him down. “Seriously, kiddo, you’ve put such a heavy scent marker on this wing no one wants to come anywhere near here. They don’t wanna fuck with that.”

Lance grumbled as Marco slung an arm across his shoulders. “Doesn’t seem to be stopping _you _.” 

“Pack perks little bro.”

“Urgh! We’re not a _pack_! There are no packs!” Lance threw his hands in the air, dislodging Marco’s arm in the process. The older just laughed and ruffled Lance’s hair.

“You totally scruffed Nadia the other day!”

Lance’s hands raised higher, “She was being rude to Veronica!” He squawked. “It was a totally normal reaction!”

Luis just raised an eyebrow, silently rendering judgment on the thoughtless way Lance’s hand had snapped out, grabbed Nadia by the back of her shirt and shook her gently until she hung limp in his fingers. 

“And you licking her as an apology was…?” Lance shoved Marco away and tried not to notice how his palm covered most of the older’s face now.

“Shut uuuuuup!”

* * *

He can’t shake the smell from his nose. It’s getting ridiculous.

Things that used to just be now set him off. Engine fuel, exhaust, the sharp-hot-metal smell of the Lions after a flight, the tang in the air of his blade against another. Every hint of smoke makes something jump in his chest. Its too much and not enough all at once. Driving him out of his skin and head.

Only one thing’s been able to soothe it the last few days and he can feel his teeth grind together at just the thought.

It had been _weeks _and still the scent clung to the woven cloth. He’d been forced to leave his gloves, especially the right one, tucked away in a drawer in his quarters aboard the Atlas. Had to ignore people’s silent questions at his bare hands, endured Shiro’s pointed looks and Pidge’s unsubtle muttering about correlation and compatibility. He’s not sure where Hunk is, hasn’t seen him much after that one, sudden, embrace.

He hasn’t even seen Lance since before the battle. The other had all but disappeared, fled from them into the safety of his family, of his pack, far, far away from- 

A sudden shudder wracks his body, starting in the base of his spine and working up through his chest until he was trembling through under the force of it.

He was having some sort of _existential crisis _over a _handshake_.

Sheer irritation turned the forming whine into a gritted hiss as it boiled out of his throat.

Ridiculous.

...He wants to_ lick it off his glove. _Have the aroma fill his lungs, fog his head, leave him insensate to match the strange insatiable desire that was clawing away at him from the inside out. The very thought makes his mouth water.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was _human_. Human enough that the Castle couldn’t distinguish any difference. Human enough that the Blade’s remedies and overpowering smells, scents, often made him wretch and gag and thank every star above for the air filters in the mamoran mask.

He remembers growled commands and attempts at hazing and slowly piecing together that they were neither and both at the same time. Remembered feeling the sinking relief that he’d established himself outside of the inner hierarchy, remembered leaning back on Red’s still burning presence those first nights in aching gratefulness that he was, Blade or not, his _father’s _son.

The glove is pressed to his face, fabric rolled over and over and over between his thumb and forefinger. Scent wafting up and over him, swelling and rising under those coaxing passes of pressure.

He grinds his head against the wall, unsure of when he’d moved towards it.

What was _wrong _with him?

The Mark wasn’t even on his _skin_.

The thought buckles his knees, leaves him to scramble half-heartedly against the smooth surface.

What… what would it be like if it _were_?!

The idea of the heavy, heady, scent pressed right against his skin, right against his primaries, or his arterials - the keen furls out unrepressed, eyes rolling back and watering as he presses them closed. His hips shift unbidden, finding a solid surface and pressing against it.

He bites a warbling keen into his glove covered wrist. His hips grind forward in short jerking circles, scattering his thoughts.

His head is a jumble of pheromones, nonsense smells that existed more in his head than in his present reality, suffusing him with every jerk of his hips. The tang of torn ozone, smoke, and _sharp blue eyes_.

He feels his body clench, a trickle of something running down the inside of his thighs as his orgasm drops him to the floor. Breaths coming in gasps, he rolls his hips almost experimentally and chokes on the night air. His head tips back, throat bared to the empty ceiling above him. Pretending, in the mess of his scattered mind, that there is another behind him. Drinking in the sigh of his straining lungs, his strong spine, his bent knees and offered weakness.

Bolts of lust ripple through him, imagining what he would look like from the bed. Picturing certain eyes and steady hands and calloused trigger fingers trailing over his spine, up the back of his neck, ghosting around the shell of his ear. Keith bites down on his own knuckles, tongue laving over his shaking fingers as he rubs his head against the wall.

He nurses softly on his glove covered wrist. Another involuntary clench sending shivers through his body, his cock twitching, untouched and sensitive in its confines.

HIs brain melts with the images rattling through him. 

What does he want? For the young alpha to lean along him? Press gentle hands along his spine and over his lower back, kneading and soothing and pressing just shy of where he wanted - wanted - so badly. For strong hands to tighten over his hips and pull him down, force him lower onto his knees, to stretch up and latch his mouth - teeth - sharp and firm - to suck over the back of his neck. To be pressed down onto the floor and claimed - made to bare his throat, stomach, hips -

The images scatter, a veritable riptide dragging him under, shaking him from the tips of his hair down to his toes. Warmth suffusing him soon after. He feels himself nuzzle into the carpet and then - nothing.

He blinks slowly. He's curled on his side. He feels… light. Empty, almost. A soft ache curls below his stomach, appeased and alone and still, endlessly, wanting. He rubs at the feeling like a bruise, feels it bloom beneath his hands, sickly-sweet and _aching_.

Keith stares down the line of his arm, eyes slowly focusing on the soaked glove. He inhales and winces, nose wrinkling at the dry-arid scent souring the air of his room. He pulls his arm in and, without thinking, presses the glove against his half open mouth.

Scent floods him. First his own - sour from his breath and then more of the same dry, hollow, coarse scent still swirling around him. Coming _from _him. Then, buried but still there, the heady, sultry scent of smoke. It curls through his lungs, shifting and mixing until his mouth waters. The sour-dry swelling into something different, something more, with every pull of Lance into his lungs. 

He rips his hand from his face, shaking. 

_What is happening...?_

* * *

Lance shoots bolt upright in his bed. 

The room is dead silent, the rest of his family spread out into different rooms for the night. It’s Lisa’s turn to have the kids, Marco and Luis are probably still up drinking, Rachel is likely with them trying to steal a bottle and Lance knows his mother went to sleep and washed her hands of the whole affair around nine. 

He… Lance scrubs a hand down his face. He thinks he ducked out. He still wasn’t allowed any alcohol (and no one wanted to cross Lisa because she_would _find out) and his everything still ached and- and- _god_, what was that _smell? _

“Lance?” 

“Pfft! Don’t try and distract m- hang on.”

“Didn’t he go to bed? I thought Lisa said-”

“Well he’s up now! Lance. Lance! Hey!”

“Where is he going?”

“Ugh! Oh my god, what _is _that?”

“It’s getting worse, crap. He’s _really _stinking up-”

“Shit! Marco, go get Lisa. Luis help me grab-!”

_...Keith?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> World Notes:  
Considered extinct bc there are very few Alpha/Omega around enough to be noticeably distinguishable from Beta, but are more technically 'endangered'... even though that's a rough word to use about human beings. So less than 2,500 adults (easily). Top of my head in crafting this AU is that there were less than 700 humans who could be designated as an alpha or omega on Earth when Lance was 12 and that number was falling. That's not saying all 700 experienced Ruts or Heats (or other physical traits) either - just that they were some deviation away from Standard Beta.  
Lance / the AU have a few details missing and/or wrong about how Alpha&Omega actually work in this AU. So unreliable narrator bc unreliable society?  
Alpha and Omega /do/ have enhanced senses of smell compared to Beta.  
Beta CAN smell and detect pheromones - it’s just that as they don’t really produce any themselves it’s a common fallacy that they can’t smell any. Thus without Alpha and Omega there aren't really any around to smell.  
So, yes, everyone CAN smell Lance and that's why he's been using blockers and suppressants and a self-care routine on top of that (YES that self-care set up was totally used sneakily by his sisters to try and combat Lance's dysphoria/self-loathing here. Badass McClain women are my jam mkay?)  
In this case, Lance also is just a stinky boi and that doesn’t help matters.  
Maybe if he was something more palatable like pine or mint or sea-salt… but he’s gun-smoke and ruin and ashes and there’s really no hiding that.  
EDIT: Every time I rewatch this show (fact-finding for Lost and Lepi) I'm shocked at how little these characters talk to each other...


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey! Action figure, grab him!”

Shiro blinked once, confused by the address, and then a second time as a veritable stampede nearly flattens him. He hooked an arm around a thin waist half out of instinct, noting absently that, even with his flesh and blood arm, the person was far too light to be healthy. 

Then the smell hit him.

“Lance?!”

The boy in question sagged against Shiro with a sad whine. The elder held his breath and the rest of him very, very, still as the smoke scented alpha listed into his grasp and more or less turned the restraining hold into a one-sided cuddle. 

“Shiiiirooo,” He winced as Lance dragged out both vowels in his nick-name. “Shiro, we _ missed you_.” 

It was getting harder to hold his breath. Gun-smoke and ruin crashed against him like waves on a shore. 

The scent seemed to thicken, to cling and oh, _shit_, that’s what this was - Lance was _ scenting him_. 

“That’s - nice, Lance.” 

Hazy blue eyes turned and failed to focus on Shiro’s face. The older squinted and leaned back, confused for a moment as to how Lance was able to even attempt said eye contact. Grey eyes jolted down then up the lanky form, narrowing in suspicion at the worryingly gaunt cheekbones and too-short sweatpants. The teenager, the _alpha_ \- and wasn’t that still a trip, whined again and shoved weakly forward until their foreheads knocked gently. 

Holy crap, the kid was burning up. 

“Nice job, muscles!”

“Marco!” The Garrison-McClain, Veronica maybe, turned and tugged at the arm Lance didn’t have tossed over Shiro’s shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Captain Shirogane. He doesn’t mean anything by it! I’m not even sure he’s aware of what he’s doing and-”  
  
Shiro did his best not to wince as Lance did his level best to brush their cheeks together. 

“Anyone wanna tell me what’s going on here?”

“We think he’s going into Rut.”

He turned an incredulous look up at Luis. “You’re kidding.”

Giant-McClain shrugged, the movement soft and almost languid. “There’s not a lot about the subject but he is matching several of the symptoms he displayed during his presentation.” 

Shiro gave up on breathing clean air and resigned himself to forcing down coughs until whatever this was resolved itself. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

Shiro looked between the tired, but clearly on guard, McClain siblings and the affectionate, if somewhat punch-drunk, kid in his arms. There’s a pervasive idea that Ruts are violent but, honestly, he’s having a hard time lining up the image of a muscle bound rager with, well, _ Lance_. His scent might be eleven different kinds of awful but the boy, young man really, himself was more gentle than Shiro had ever seen him. 

“He doesn’t seem to be, ah…”

“A sex crazed maniac?” 

There was just something wrong about how sharply Garrison-McClain managed to say that. She nudged her glasses higher, brown eyes serious. Shiro cast his gaze away, not touching that one with a ten foot pole. 

“What dragged him out here?”

The Shaggy-McClain shrugged, “No idea. Sorta seems like it might’ve been you.” Shaggy threw up his hands at the knee-jerk expression Shiro was sure he was making. “Don’t mean anything by it, just- you all spent a lot of time together up in space. Could be he thinks of you guys as good as family. If that mechanic of his were around, Lala’d probably try to climb him too.” 

Shiro let himself have the half second thought that it’d wouldn’t be so bad to have Hunk around to foist Lance off onto before shutting that down and dealing with his reality. 

Which was, at the moment, Lance determinedly trying to line their wrists up. 

_ Yup. Scent marking. _

Which was… weird. The McClains weren’t wrong, there wasn’t a whole lot out there about A’s and O’s in this day and age but somethings, it seemed, just wouldn’t die. 

Scent marking was probably the most innocuous of those infamous rumors. Scent-reading was still taught in primary schools, after all, even if it was used more for preludes to nap-time than any actual tracking skills. 

Shiro steeled himself, _ patience yields focus _, and let his jaw drop open. 

It was a fight not to instantly recoil. The first breath lodged in his lungs and _ burned _ the whole way down. He coughed once, twice, and shuddered in resignation as it just settled deeper in his lungs. _ Stubborn. _

Needless to say this was not quite how Shiro had imagined his night would go. 

“Is everything alright, sir?” Garrison-McClain took one look at this flat expression and pursed her lips, as though she were fighting a smile. “Other than the, ah-”

Shiro shifted Lance a little so the other’s pointed nose wasn’t digging into his pulse. “Teenager climbing me?” 

Shaggy snorted, “To be fair dude, he’s mostly just hanging off you. If Lala wanted to climb you, I’m pretty sure you’d be climbed.” 

Shiro did his best to convey what he thought of that assessment without words.  
  
Shaggy didn’t have the good sense to bite back the shit-eating grin that stole across his face. It reminded Shiro more of Lance than he’d like. Especially given he shouldn’t feel fond of these strangers in any amount. Apropos of nothing, Lance suddenly perked up and listed dangerously out of Shiro’s grip, straining towards the hallway. He shifted Lance to his other side, closer to the wall, and sighed. 

“It’s not quite what I imagined I’d be doing this evening, no.”

Garrison McClain winced, sympathetic. “Are we keeping you from any plans, captain?”

Shiro staggered a step forward as Lance began to shuffle away, rocking his balance as the weight along his left side sudden lessened. He shook his head, feeling a little sorry for the McClains who, clearly, had been roused from their own plans by Lance’s escapade. 

“No, not as such. I was hoping to track down my own rogue sibling, actually. You haven’t happened across Keith, have you? He made the last of his meetings this week and then vanished.” He frowned, one older sibling to another, “That was two days ago. He’s always been a bit of a lone-wolf but I’m worried he’s not eating again.”

He’d been on his way to figure out what that was all about when Lance more or less shoved him against a wall and snuggled him near to suffocation. 

Garrison McClain nodded once. 

“We’ll keep an eye out for hi- _ Lance. _” 

She cracks his name like a whip and Shiro spares the time it takes to track the absent alpha to wish she’d been the one shot into space with them. He certainly could have used that practiced tone while trying to ride herd on the energetic teenagers. 

Lance hasn’t gone terribly far. He’s a few feet away, planted close to one of the only doors in the hallway near the end of the little culdesac. 

The alpha was staring at the door pad with almost comical determination. It dawned on the four watching that he had, in all likeliness, forgotten how to use the tool. 

Shiro had a funny feeling the alpha was a few seconds short of simply attempting to rip the offending block off the wall. And while usually such a feat would be beyond Lance, especially now with his wiry arms, the rumors of alpha-strength, and the odd limitation-wrecking cocktail that supposedly cropped up with a rut, weren’t something he wanted to experiment with this evening.

Shiro sighs and strides over, ready to submit to whatever form of affection Lance will deem suitable to pull the teen’s attention off the innocent door lock before him, when it dawns on him.

That’s Keith’s door. 

Shiro pauses, either the lack of air or the choking scent getting to him as he imagined what Keith’s reaction would look like as a result of being forcibly snuggled and scented after specifically hiding himself away. 

The captain winced, not entirely sure if the yelling or the gratuitous and instinctive violence would end better in the short run. 

He draws breath to catch Lance’s attention and feels it all punch out of his solar plexus as the smell hits him. 

It’s all over him, he realizes. His clothes, his skin, his hair. It’s all over the hallway too, now that he thinks on it. Lance dragging his wrists and shoulder along the wall and even the McClain siblings smell faintly of gunpowder and ruin. 

Ozone and acid and heat crashes over him like a rogue wave, same as the last time he’d been close enough to smell the teenager. It _ burns _. Unpleasant and acidic and, as he draws near to the teen and the door, slowly changing. 

Then the acid notes _ curl _ , edging away from the sharpness he’s come to expect and into something almost savory. That tang of ozone roils to the fore, the smell of _ heat _, a hint of carbon, and for a moment the air is heavy with the smell just before a storm. 

The door pad goes _ crunch _ under Lance’s fingers. 

* * *

Hot air and grit. The arid scent of warm sand.

It felt like all the moisture had been baked out of the air of this little hallway and beneath all of that was the prevailing sense of _ Keith Keith Keith_. 

He was here. 

Somewhere. Nearby. 

Shiro was a good clue for that. Good barometer. Keith-o-meter. 

He was glad he’d found Shiro. 

Hunk is gone, overseas and miles away. Pidge is holed up behind more walls and firewalls than he’d know what to do with on a good day. Coran is nowhere to be found and not for lack of trying. 

He thought he’d had all his pack where he could touch them. Nadia and Sylvio, Mami and Papi, Lisa and Louis, Marco and Rachel and Veronica.

Except, ‘pack’ isn’t just _ family _ anymore. Pack is now _ kin _ and _ mine _ and _ otherkin_. It’s Shiro and Hunk and Pidge and Coran and Allura is a gaping, empty hole tearing away at some part inside him and it _ hurts_. 

But Shiro is _ here _ and is so important. 

Shiro was their rock. He was their stability and before all that he’d been Lance’s personal hero, even if the man hadn’t quite lived up to the daydreamed meetings he’d once imagined. But that too was okay. Because Shiro was one of his now. He was _ pack _ and he was safe and well and that was all that mattered. 

Lance feels the itching tension leave him a little with that realization. The older beta smells faintly like high-altitude, a little like ozone and permafrost. A bit stiff, a little fragile, but clean beneath it all. It’s a nice smell. Way better than what Lance remembers of his brief crossings with the man back in the Garrison and lacking the sour-bitter tang of worry that’d plagued him while they were in space.

Does Shiro know how much they need him? 

Lance worries. The older beta had been so ready to stop piloting Black. 

Had seemed so ready to _ rest _ \- did he know that was okay, too? 

Maybe he didn’t. But that was alright, they’d convince him. Just had to get to Keith first. 

The door pad _ crunches _ under his fingertips and the world goes up in flames.

* * *

The world is boiling.

He can’t sit still. He feels as though he were about to burst. 

He feels ripe. Ready. Split along his seams, juice seeping through the cracks. 

That’s more literal than he’d like, maybe. He glares at the pants he kicked across the room, a sense of confused betrayal momentarily overriding the throbbing in his, well, everything. 

It didn’t - he paused and shifted, rolling over onto his back again with a dissatisfied wiggle - make any _ sense_. 

He grinds his teeth, tongue feeling oddly small in his mouth. 

And sure, Galra had _ some _ sort of hierarchy, he’d seen it first hand in the Blades, but no one had said anything about _ this! _ He thought it was just some outdated caste system! 

This felt a lot like, well… Keith groaned and rolled over again, burying his face in his well-punched pillow. It felt a lot like a _ heat_. Or how it’d been described, at least. 

He’d only ever seen it referenced in porn and even that pretty rarely. 

...whether that had to do with fads or how infrequently he’d looked at porn wasn’t really something Keith wanted to think about.

There was _ no part of this _ he wanted to think about. A slick pull forced a shudder up his spine, that particular thing he didn’t want to think about leaking in a persistent dribble. 

It was terrible. It was _ wonderful_. 

It was, when he had the space in his head to think, getting worse.

He stretched against that dull cramp under his hips, hissing as the tip of his red cock rubbed against the bed as he shifted a knee closer to his stomach. Keith propped himself higher up on his knees, pulling away from the sheets. He’d rubbed himself raw halfway through the week to little avail, cock chafing against sword-calluses as he stripped himself desperately between meetings. Yesterday, he’d slid a few fingers through the seeping mess by accident, trying to get to his perineum when his orgasm stayed just out of reach and his jerking was causing more pain than he liked. He’d barely put any pressure on the spot just before his entrance and-

His thighs rubbed together at the memory, slick friction a game of too-little still-good.

That accident had been the most satisfying orgasm he’d had. After he’d come down from the high, glove stuck annoyingly to his cheek, he’d luckily had the sense to realize it’d also been the easiest. 

It hadn’t helped. 

If anything, it’d just made it worse. The clawing sensation in his belly only growing stronger. 

He’s never been one for onanism, something that’d only been a benefit those two years in that tiny hut with his _ mother_, but he doesn't remember it being this difficult. Or demanding. 

Keith glares at the glove sitting inches from his face for a second before giving in and hauling it close. He snuffles against the fabric, trying not to feel stupid about his ritual of inhaling against the glove - the thought of being able to come back and curl up around it all that got him through his last meeting. 

He told himself it wasn’t any more a crutch than the cups of coffee other people slugged through the day or the toys stacked atop machinery or the weird little rituals he’s watched most of his peers perform for years. Even the Blades had things; scraps of cloth, polished stones, little things and obvious secrets hidden in bunks and lockers and decks. 

Come to think of it, he’d seen a lot of them rub at those trinkets the same way he rubbed at his glove. He presses his nose to the fabric again, grumbling as less scent rose from it to meet his persistent fingers than before. 

His hips shift, trying to find a comfortable position as he struggles to eek out just a _ little more _ of that damn scent out of his poor worn glove. A faint waft rolls over him, most of it his own dry, desert-sand, smell but laced beneath it is that sharp flare of sourceless heat. 

Keith slams his forehead against the pillow, bucking useless against thin air as his fingers slid through the mess leaking out of him. He digs his traitorous hand into the side of one cheek and keens, suddenly delirious with unexpected pleasure.

The grip spread him wide, let the near-frozen air of his room washing over his exposed hole, and his back arched as he felt it flutter against nothing. His rim felt puffy, sore and tender, and every time his fingers slid even the slightest bit he was reminded how much more sensitive he was there.

His fingers spasmed, reluctant to let go. He had tried to avoid it, a little afraid at just how much his body seemed to _ crave _ even the faintest touch. 

_ … why _ not _ give in_.

It would feel _ so good_. He knew it. His body knew it. 

He grit his teeth and let his hands crash to the mattress. 

There was something in him totally unwilling to just give into the ache. 

Probably, he thought uncharitably through the throbbing in his head, because he knew once he started he wouldn’t be able to _ stop_. 

He rocked his forehead deeper into his pillow, shifting his knees and his spine in leisurely passes. 

A deep sigh of contentment rattled out of him a few adjustments later. There. Finally, _ finally_, the tension in his back starts to ease. 

He sinks deeper into the mattress with a rattling sigh. 

Everything feels _ good, _just liquid bliss and the buzzing in his head dulling to a thrumming hum… 

Keith stretches into it for a moment, feeling where his ribs pull in above his hips, where his waist still relentlessly tucks itself high, broad shoulders and densely packed muscles be damned. It wasn’t, he allows as he presses his chest lower, all that weird. Most galra he’d seen had a similar shape. Granted they usually had several more pounds of muscle and at least two feet more to distract from their bodice-like waists but whatever.

That open, heady, feeling stirs from his belly up through his chest and rushes into his head.

A rumble builds in his chest. It buzzes along with the simple pleasure in his blood and spills out his throat. 

It really does feel good, something about the pose finally scratching that itch. 

He ducks his head low, humming again as the back of his neck is bared and bent in supplication, spine arched and waiting for someone to come along and press him into a new shape. 

_ ...Wait. _

His peace breaks like shattered glass. Keith shifts a little, hips wiggling in the air.

He’s _ chest down, ass up_. 

God fucking damnit, he’s fucking _ presenting_. 

It’s such a classically omegan pose; coy-eyed models with come-hither stares looking seductively up at the camera with bared necks and bent spines. Their rumps raised enticingly in the air, the same way his is right the fuck now and when did _ this _ become his life?

Keith groans for an entirely different reason, hips still propped in the air to combat the ache that returns every time he even thinks about dropping them back down. He snarls, face pressed against his sheets, as he gives in to the new flush of pleasure. His nipples pebble as they scrape against the bed, rubbed mercilessly against the bunching fabric as he cants his hips higher, looking for that thoughtlessly perfect angle from before.

He knows the moment he finds it again. The images coming in fast and hard, dragged into his brain with the sudden flood of buzzing pleasure. 

Hands in his hair, teeth in his skin. Being propped up, bent over, thrown down. Gun-rough fingers and manicured nails smoothing down his spine. Smoke and ashes and white teeth flashing behind pink lips - biting, holding, _ claiming_. 

Sharp toothed and clumsy tongued. Always a challenge or spur at the ready but never a _ threat_. Hands on shoulders, marking and holding and claiming and hidden depths. Eyes deep enough to fall into-

“_Lance_-”

A flash of skin and long fingers wrapped around the hilt of a broadsword. Smoke fills his lungs, faint and salt-tinged with his own sweat.

Another shudder races down Keith’s spine as the scent hits, image cementing behind his eyes. Is he really thinking about _ Lance _ right now?

With his dumb cowlick and wide grins and stupid, selfish, attentive behavior? The dumb way he always falls over himself trying to help, arrogant and self-sacrificing and completely incapable of defending himself against anyone he cared about?

_ Lance? _

The leather squeaks against his sweat-warm fingers as his hands convulse. 

_Lance_ cared about _ Allura_. Keith’s bent fingers curl into fists. 

The glove flutters to the floor, a quiet _ fwip _ the only noise beyond the rattling of his bed. 

He pulls air into his lungs. Tries to breathe his way through the _ hot-flash-need-fear _ that keeps striking through his spine as he looks at the glove on the floor. 

His next breath chokes him. Dry and arid and _ salty-bitter_. It roils up around him, thrashing and awful, like heatshimmers off pavement. 

His tongue is too small in his mouth. Parched and hollow.

He can’t look away from the damn glove. Every time he closes his eyes _ fear _ shoots right through his chest, surges of adrenalin unhelpfully telling him that he’s _ at risk_. That he’s _ alone_. 

...that he’s been _ left_. 

Keith staggers to his feet. He’s across the room, gravity tugging at the slick seeping down his thighs, before another thought enters his head.

Something swirls through him as he moves to reclaim the stupid glove. Satisfaction, maybe. Warm and soothing and, thank fuck whatever it was, so different from the lashes of fear from before. 

He sighs, greedily inhaling as it washes over him once again. Sultry and searing, settling deep into his lungs and, if only for that breath, chasing away the emptiness. Heat boils under his ribcage, chasing away the chill.

He drags in another breath and another, feet stumbling closer. It’s almost as heady as it was that first day in the hangar, that first night he’d woken with the glove pressed between his teeth. 

His palms brush cold metal. His head snaps up.

_That’s not coming from the glove._

Keith looks to his left, the article of clothing lays almost two feet away and yet… the smell, _ that _ scent, is only getting stronger. 

“Nnnnaha...”

The noise slips out of his throat. That ache _ pulses_, hollowness unbearable. His hand slides down the flat surface of the door, fingernails scraping uselessly against metal as his knees give way beneath him. He wishes he’d gotten his mother’s claws instead of her fangs. Anything to give him the illusion of strength as his head swims over a fucking smell. 

He heaves in a deeper breath, lungs greedily filling with scent-laden air. It just sinks him faster.

It’s so good, though. Gets his blood surging in a way he’d thought lost to him with the Lions. 

The highest high, the sharpest rush of adrenalin. The harshest corner before impact and the drop of his stomach before revving the engine against gravity’s will. 

Another noise warbles out of his throat, louder and lower than the last.

As if in response, the heat under his ribs, in his lungs, cranks higher. The smoke-burnt-char swells deeper, something rising from the ash-laden scent. 

Another line of slick tickles down his thighs. His head rocks against the cool door, once again stuck on his knees and _ happy to be down there_. His breaths are coming in faster, head spinning as his body starts to shake. 

A whining trill cut through his chest. High and sharp like a whistle before juddering down into painfilled growling. 

There’s a thud just above his head and then the world lights up in a spill of limbs and noise and _ fire_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In a funny twist of events, Lance falls nonverbal while Keith is not (quite) so handicapped...
> 
> See you guys in ch3!


	3. Chapter 3

Louis silently raises one large hand before Marco’s smirking face. 

Veronica is half pleased he knows better than to pull that on her, half utterly disappointed as it means she has to deal with the sight before her. 

Kogane is, well, ‘significantly less clothed’ is the nicest way Veronica has of putting it. She catches a ripple of dense muscle and a fine scatter of black hair before, well… 

She carefully slides her eyes up towards the top of the door frame. This has the added bonus of keeping her idiot younger sibling out of her line of sight as well. 

After a second she raises a hand approximately where she thinks poor Captain Shirogane’s eyes ought to be. Veronica risks a glance to the side and lowers her hand. 

The captain already has both this organic and floating prosthetic clasped over his own face. 

Smart man. 

A loud _ riiiip _ pulls her out of her commiseration. 

Lala’s sleep shirt hangs off his shoulders. Ripped from the collar down, not by claws but by bull-headed strength.

Veronica’s eyes catch on the bleeding scrapes Kogane is digging into her baby brother’s back. His, surprisingly, blunt nails pull beading welts as far across Lance’s back as he can reach.

Her (stupid, kind, brilliant, impulsive, _ alpha _) brother just grunts softly and hunkers lower, almost shielding the taller man from their sight. Kogane’s fingers flex, blood smearing in little trails across Lala’s healed scars. It stains his pale fingers, dying them a sickly pink.

A guttural sound yanks her attention back to Kogane’s face.

Flushed lips curl inhumanly upwards in an animalistic snarl. There’s a flash of white and the hair on Veronica’s arms stands on end. She doesn’t realize she’s moved backwards until she bumps into Louis’ raised arm.

_ Fangs. Those are _fangs. 

Kogane has teeth like a dog and the bark to match. 

Her older brother tugs her closer to his bulk, taps at her raised arm until it bends away from Marco’s crowded form. She doesn’t remember raising it. None of them move.

The snarling lessens in volume but doesn’t fade. 

“Keith...”

(Shirogane hasn’t lifted his head out of his hands. She can’t tell if that’s tactically sound or just irresponsible.)

Right, Keith, that’s Kogane’s given name.

Well. _ Keith _ is, mostly, under Lance. (Thank goodness given his… everything… would otherwise be in the breeze.) The awkward position, laid out along his back on the floor beneath her younger brother, isn’t hampering his temper in the slightest. Glaring down the gathering of McClains and Shirogane in the hallway with single (or non, she thinks not uncharitably) minded determination. 

It’d almost be cute, if he wasn’t a stark naked portrait of primed muscle and genocidal-yellow eyes. 

She watches the muscles in her brother’s back bunch, shifting around his too-visible spine and still countable ribs. She can’t see what he does, some shift of weight, some duck of his head, but Kogane’s (_ Keith’s _ ) reaction is almost visceral. His entire body _ shakes _, raised torso falling back to the floor in a swoon of suddenly-lax muscles. The nerve-grating snarl judders into a cooing trill. 

The hairs on her arm stay rigidly at attention, the new noise no less unsettling than the old. 

It’s not half as eerie as the wave of scent that crashes over them. 

She half expects to feel her hair blow back from her face; expects the drag of the tide pulling against her braced feet. It has an almost physical presence to it regardless because all four of them sway in place. 

Burnt sugar and storm hot air crests around them. Kogane’s blown-glass heat sweetening Lala’s blackpowder and molten-wreckage into something new. 

Shirogane doesn’t raise his head from his hands

(...She decides it’s irresponsible.)

Veronica takes a step forward, ignoring every instinct demanding she _ get down _ or _ back away _ and Louis’s worried grasp, and adjusts her glasses in a way she knows will reflect the artificial lights of the hallway. 

It doesn’t make sense.

Lala, _ Lance _ , is the alpha. A Rutting alpha at that. His scent, strong and fierce, composed of every element of _ war _ and _ destruction _ Veronica’s ever encountered, is the one marking the hallway. The one rubbed gently into her skin. 

If anything here were to cow her, it should be _ that _ (him). 

That logic allows her to power through the bone deep desire to _ turn _ and _ run _.

She will _ not _ be intimidated away from her baby brother by some surly, congested, _ nudist _ … whatever Kogane might actually turn out to be, because clearly _ human _ is no longer on the short list. 

* * *

This… is not something Shiro ever wanted to deal with. 

_ Adam _ had been the one to sit Keith down (more like tactically ambush) with the anatomy books and charts and almost gleefully constructed kit of Horribly Embarrassing Things A Teenager Must Know. 

Adam would have made an amazing father.

(Now he’ll never get to-)

He never wanted to know. Keith _ dating _ was a total impossibility. 

Not that he wasn’t a good kid, anyone would be so lucky to catch his attention, but he was so _ prickly _. Never letting anyone close. 

He wouldn’t have been shocked if Keith ended up married to his work. 

They, the three of them, had joked plenty about just that - Keith flying through the kosmos until the day he died; supported only by ground control and whatever would pass as fuel stations out in the black. 

Shiro pressed his face a little further into his palms, wincing at the unforgiving press of cold metal along his left eye. 

(Yet another reminder of what was lost.)

Then, of course, everything had fallen apart. Kerberos, the Galra, Voltron. 

His shoulders slumped and, without thinking, he let the breath trapped within him free in a long exhale. Breathing exercises were half the reason he’d made it as far as he had; both within the Garrison and then in... in the arena. So long as he kept his head, there wasn’t much that could stop him. (Adam had been fond of saying that.)

_ One out, four in_. _ One- _

He doesn’t get to ‘two’.

The memory punches out of his head along with all the air in his lungs. 

It chews him up, spits him out. Shoves him into a machine and sets the world on spin. 

The heat hits him first, Lance’s carbon-ozone heavy scent landing like a fist. 

Ammonia, carbon, ozone and something that he thinks must be cordite. Gun-smoke, back from when guns produced more than light and energy. Primitive and powerful and about as subtle as the boy’s flirting. 

It _ burns _ all over again. Worse, now that it’s changed. 

It’s the air before a storm. The prickling feel of static racing through nose and over his tongue. That savory edge to the smoke is stronger now, something more than the ashes-and-ozone it was before. Something less than the stench of ruination it was. 

The caramel-sweet burn of nitroglycerin lingers in his lungs, chemical and potent. 

He scrapes his tongue, not fond of this new, savory-sweet, factor. 

(And, besides, he’s not even that fond of the kid to begin with. Not that Lance was a _ bad person _ per-say, he just wasn’t what Shiro would think of as anyone’s first choice. Not the fastest or the smartest or even the kindest. ( _ Keith, Pidge, Hunk _). It wasn’t Lance’s fault, really, that he was outclassed by his peers. In a different generation, in a different career, maybe, he’s sure Lance could have been among the brightest. But he had the bad luck of running in the same crowd as genuine prodigies; of geniuses with warm hearts and open minds. And Lance… just wasn’t.)

Even changed, it’s horrible. It’s a reminder of the price he’s paid. 

Of the choice that cost him _ everything_. 

* * *

His vision swims. 

Everything, every part of him, is burning. His blood boils, his eyes feel dry, the air in his lungs _ sizzles _ with every inhale and he can’t stop breathing it deeper. 

Something damp wells beneath his fingers, slickening his grip as he clings desperately to the skin he fought to reach. He whines, sharp in the back of his throat, as he feels his grasp start to slip. 

It _ thrums _ through him, shocking new air into his lungs even as his back falls softly to the floor.

_ Safe, together, real-here- _ not _ -leaving _. 

He doesn’t need to hold on. Doesn’t have to claw or fight or struggle. 

What he wants, can be freely given. Will be. _ Is _. 

Smoke eddies up around him, curling and melding through his lungs, his mouth, his _ skin _. It surrounds him, flaring higher as he calls to it in turn. Surging to the fore, cradling him gently even as it surges and snaps outwards like a war banner. 

A contented hum builds in his chest, warms his throat.

A declaration.

Not a mark, not _ yet _. 

Blue fire fills his vision, not a hint of grey within them. Even the dark outer ring a solid circle of navy. 

He _ burns _.

* * *

“Oh, boy.” 

They both look up through the still open door. Lance drops his weight again, covering Keith’s exposed, vulnerable-soft-not-soft, belly once more. 

He feels something slither up his spine, electric in its heat as the voices continue. The thrum in his chest _ turns _. Thunder crashing far, far, closer. 

(Keith rises beneath him, snarl a concert harmony to the growl that’s rattling his ribs.)

“Wo-ah! Ee-easey there. Let’s just take it slow. Alright, Ronnie?” The voice, _ whipcord-cloves-laughter _, drops low, as if they can’t hear him at this secretive register, “Before the alfalfa and dog-boy there decide they’re gonna rip our throats instead of each other's clothes.”

“That would require them to be _ wearing clothes _ in the first place.” 

The rage inside him wobbles and then slinks back down to whence it came. Not a threat. ...The judgement in those words doesn’t seem to be directed at them, which is odd. 

There’s a deep sigh, the air minty-cool with the sharp odor of permafrost, which is less so.

_ Shiro _. He’d always been easier to scent-read-feel than most. Guy wore his stress on his sleeve.

Lance breathes deep, trying to scent around the desert-storm brewing beneath him for just a moment. It comes to him in a jumble, a hazy reflection of _ mine-ours-pack _that doesn’t tell him much beyond the fact that they’re not in any danger. It’s good enough. He shifts, flushed skin dragging shudders up their nerves. His head drops lower. He tries to keep his teeth behind his lips.

He’d been… looking for someone. For Keith.

(He’d found him)

He’d been looking for Keith, right?

(He’d found him and caught him and he was _ right there right here right _-)

The older paladin shifted beneath him. Impatient and- Lance cracks his head to the side, staring into the shadows of what he thinks is Keith’s room. _ How _ does he _ know _ that?

“Sometime today, Shirogane?”

* * *

It doesn’t escape his notice that Garrison McClain has dropped his title. He’ll give her this one. It’s a stressful situation. 

He doesn’t pull his head from his hands. This, unfortunately, means he doesn’t see Shaggy McClain’s half-blind approach to the fizzling door pad. 

He does hear the smack of limbs and a scuffle ensuing for a brief moment.

“Ronnie, seriously, you’re gonna lose fingers tryin’ to get between ‘em. Besi-_ hey! _-ides!” Shaggy McClain whines, sharp and high, “Pretty sure we’re gonna see more of wonder-boy there than anyone wants if Lala moves in any other direction.” 

Shiro waits for a moment. For what, he’s not quite sure. 

Maybe for this all to be some sort of weird hallucination. Brought on by stress or trauma or one of those interestingly shaped bottles of probably-space-booze he’d received and confiscated from the younger paladin’s and their many, _ many _, admirers. 

The hallway reeks of smoke and sand and _ need _. 

He doesn’t move his head from his hands. He doesn’t see Shaggy McClain’s one handed routing through the exposed wires, the other firmly clapped over his own eyes. He doesn’t see Garrison McClain’s eye roll shift from exasperated to concerned or Giant McClain’s aborted grab for both his siblings. 

He does hear the creak of metal, the crackle-pop of discharging electricity, and the absolute, hair raising, horrifyingly gutteral noise that shortly ensues.

Garrison McClain yelps, voice identifiable by its high tenor from her lower-register brothers, “Oh for-” but the expletive fizzles out into an angry hiss before it finishes. There’s a startled noise, like a backed up sewer-drain, a grinding, gurgling, _angry_ sound, and then the door slams shut.

“Fucks sake.” He finishes Garrison McClain’s curse and doesn’t feel any better for it. 

* * *

_ Keith. _

He finally found Keith. 

(why had he been looking for Keith? Had he left again? Upped and vanished _ again _? Left them behind for bigger and better things-)

There was- something… something he wasn’t quite sure of. 

(_ why _ had he been looking for Keith? He’d been… home? Family. _ Pack _ . Hunk had left. Had started leaving long before they’d managed to return to Earth. Pidge had never really joined, had she? They? Lance didn’t even _ know _ and it gnawed away at him)

He hunkered lower, thrum rumbling through him like distant thunder. 

(But Keith was _ here _ . Stubborn and harsh and unrelenting. Lightning in a bottle, fire made flesh. Bright and dangerous and always, _ always _, just out of reach)

That arid scent had mellowed, furled out into something less achingly alone. Sand, still, and heat, hot enough to scald, but _ more _ . Heady and charged, drought before flood. It made Lance want to dig deeper, to push harder, to see what would happen when the storm finally _ broke _. 

Purple eyes stare unblinkingly back at him, wide and searching. 

(It’s everything he’s wanted since he was _ twelve _ . Look at me,_ look at me_, **_look at me_**-)

_ I don’t have time for this _.

The memory jolts through him, clearing his head with an almost audible crack. 

This is _ Keith. _

Keith, who’s never had the time of day for him. 

Who’s the strongest person Lance knows, the most determined, self sufficient, stubborn, sweet-smelling soft-feeling _ delici-- _

He rears back, yanking himself away from the whining man’s scent glands. He blinks, confused, in the low gloom. They’re in Keith’s room. When did they get in Keith’s room? His chest heaves, drawing in air like the oxygen won’t touch his lungs. It’s all over the place in here. Tang and salt and frustration and _ heat _-

Oh, heck. 

“Laaaaaance.” 

He shakes his head, doing his best to remember that there was… there was something he was supposed to remember. Something wasn’t right - no matter how perfect Keith smelled or looked… there was a reason he was pulling away. 

There had to be, right?

Even Keith seemed to be coming back to himself now. Any second now the older once-paladin was going to-

“_ Lance _. Get back here.” 

Hands reach for him-

* * *

He’d never noticed how much bigger Lance’s hands were than his own until the other’s, the _ alpha’s _ some part of him whined, closed over both of his wrists in one easy clutch of fingers. 

But that was fine. Sure, the hold felt nice. Comforting and secure and the view it afforded was pretty great, Lance all stretched out and predatory over his body. But given the other didn’t seem to be _ getting with the program _ he was gonna have to just-

Keith blinks and tries again. 

-nothing. 

He braces his feet, knees knocking against the outside of Lance’s thighs, and shoves. 

His wrists don’t even leave the fucking ground.

Lance’s fingers barely even tighten over his skin. It’s the same, steady, weight it’d been but he is going _ nowhere, _ apparently, until Lance decides to let him.

It shouldn’t be possible. It really, truly, shouldn’t be happening. He’s still got a few centimeters on the younger paladin, probably outweighs him in sheer muscle mass by at least ten pounds. Maybe more, given just how thin the other feels - the jut of ribs and hipbones a worrying kick to instincts he didn’t know he had with each slow slide.

_ Feed. Provide. Defend. _

But here he is, well and truly pinned beneath the alpha. By _ one _, huge he notes again, hand. 

He can feel the blood rush to his face and it’s got nothing to do with rage. His mouth feels wet and he swallows, noting absently how Lance’s bright eyes track the bob of his throat and, oh, right. Bright blue, reflecting the shine from the glowing markings cut just under those sharp eyes. 

_ Altean strength _.

He pushes harder, just to feel Lance press him back.

Not situational, then_ . _ Not something to do with his presentation, not something to do with the strange heady-heavy-sultry edge to the other’s scent. 

He’ll be this strong _ all the time _ and damn if that doesn’t light his hindbrain up like a pinball machine. 

* * *

Keith pushes against him again and, somehow, Lance knows it’s just a test. The man under him doesn't really want to go anywhere. If Keith wanted him off, wanted him gone or, heck, even just bruised then that’s what he’d be, one way or another. 

But he doesn’t do more than plant his feet and press up against him, hips rubbing up in a way that feels _ nothing _ like a buck or throw. The dark haired boy pushes once, twice, and arches up into him. Lance shudders and lets a little of his weight fall onto his elbow. Keith _ moves _, a full body grind that rubs their chests, hips, thighs against each other in a dirty slide. 

“_ Ahh!” _

He’s not sure who cries out. Probably both of them. His head is going foggy again and he can feel saliva gather in his mouth, a tingling feeling springing up along his gums. 

_ God _ , Keith smells _ so good _. 

He knows, in the same part of his brain that grinned when James averted his gaze, that preened when Hunk capitulated, that balked every time they separated out of Voltron, that it’s partly because Keith now smells like him. 

But that’s still only half of the equation. Because Keith doesn’t just smell like him, he smells like _ his _. 

Keith’s own scent, that had sunk deep into his brain the day he’d stepped off that pod with a wolf, an altean, the scariest galra Lance had ever laid eyes on, and a scent to knock all two of his brain cells dead, is rising to meet him. Is beckoning him closer, twining with his and making something mouthwatering. That sun-on-sand, brittle-wind scent unfurling into _ more _. 

A low groan echoes, loud and close, in his ears and Lance hauls himself further away, suddenly aware that he’s been mouthing at Keith’s bare shoulder again, working his way steadily towards the prominent gland just below the other’s ears. 

It looks sore. 

Like it’d feel tender and firm in his mouth. Glistening already with a dew that he knows would slide like honey over his tongue. 

* * *

“Ah, wait- no, ugh, got it!” 

The door opens. Yellow eyes flash out of the gloom. Lance lets out a yelp as his legs are knocked out from beneath him. There’s a flash of pale skin as a leg wraps around him and that guttural, sink-drain, growl rumbles forth again. The door snaps shut.

There’s a pause, then; “Marco!”

Shaggy- Marco- McClain flinches, practically jumping in place. 

The door springs back open.

A flash of far too much of Keith appears out of the gloom for the half-second before the door swooshes closed again. 

“Sorry!”

Open. Lance with one hand trapped somewhere under one of Keith’s knees while the other tried to flip them once more. Closed.

_ Whoosh _ . Keith, making a game attempt Lance’s pants. It might have been more successful had he not been attempting it with his teeth- er, fangs. _ Wham _.

Shiro presses his eyes shut, trying to shake that last one out of his head. He opens them a few seconds later, the _ woosh wham whoosh wham _of the door opening and closing occurring with far greater speed now.

Wait a second.

He turns a stink eye on Shaggy McClain, a nasty suspicion occurring. 

“...Are you doing that on purpose?”

McClain freezes and, for a second, Shiro would swear he’s looking down at Lance mid-trouble. Hunches shoulders, stone-still form, slightly cocky grin and all. 

“Well…”

Shiro can feel a growl of his own, unfortunately perfectly human, growing. 

(Or maybe that’s just the headache).

The brown eyes narrow, suddenly serious, and the lock on the door engages with a frazzled _ beep _!

Shiro draws breath-

“Look, I’m not sure what your business is and I really don’t wanna know, but _ I’m _ not thrilled at the idea of catching my baby brother with his pants down.” 

-and chokes. 

“That’s-”

“Sorta what’s gonna happen if I open this door, dude.” 

Brown eyes don't waver, all traces of the lackadaisical jester gone, and Shiro thinks he knows now what a target in Lance’s sights feels like before he pulls the trigger. 

“So,” Shaggy continues, and Shiro is suddenly aware that Garrison and Giant McClain are still somewhere behind him. “What’s it gonna be?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Altean strength, bitch.  
Alphas are more prone to ‘hysterical strength’ than the average bear but A L T E A N LANCE, COWARDS.  
Keith’s galra puberty is screwing him up, yeah, but also his aforementioned latent omegan genes aren’t so latent. It’s another ‘lack of / lost information’ on ABO in this universe that’s making him (and others earlier in the timeline) think that. 
> 
> Canon Shiro doesn’t think much of Lance.   
He has one (1) positive thing to say to Lance in the entire series and that’s the ‘sharpshooter’ comment (which personally felt very much like a throw away line and moment seeing as how it never comes up again. Ie: Shiro never praises Lance for his shooting again or instructs Lance specifically to positions in the field where it will be useful. Contrast to how he instructs Pidge, Hunk and Keith and generally it’s just ouch).   
I’m not sure how many, if any, people have noticed but I’ve been trying to make that lack of relationship clear in Shiro’s POV.   
Wishing Veronica had been in space instead of Lance.  
Wanting Hunk there so he wouldn’t have to deal with Lance.  
Disliking Marco’s grin because it looks a lot like Lance’s (or, rather, Lance’s looks like Marco’s but Shiro is coming at it from the other way around).   
Shiro’s not a bad person for this! But he certainly doesn’t have a good impression of Lance in general.   
Remember, Shiro was absent for a majority of Lance’s growth in the series and, when he was around, was largely focused on Pidge/Katie’s and Keith’s growth. Hunk was blatantly useful and thus eventually received praise - but until Hunk started openly fixing things around the castle, he was just as shunted by Shiro as Lance was/is.   
Again, Shiro is being a normal human. He’s not a bad person for any of this behavior and it’s not only understandable, but reasonable once you take into account that Keith was more or less his ward and Pidge/Katie is the abandoned daughter of the men he feels he put in danger. (Shiro’s guilt/martyr complex should be its own character).   
It does, however, suck really hard to be on the opposite end of this ^. ...probably more so when the person is your “hero”. 
> 
> No one is interested in voyeurism. Shiro isn't interested in fighting Lance for Keith or anything like that (ewww). He is, however, concerned for their mutual and consenting virtue. Poor Shiro, he's so tired of being the adult. He sort of thought the McClains were gonna help with that but ahahaha nope. McClains. 
> 
> Lance, however harmless in actuality, is a rutting alpha that smells like death and destruction. Shiro's got some justifiable concerns from his POV.


End file.
